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Family Medicine Diversity & Anti-Racism Committee

ucsd family medicine diversity committee

Our Aims

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Faculty Co-Chairs

 

dr. akbar rahmanAkbar Rahman, M.D., M.P.H.
Associate Clinical Professor 

I was born & raised in the San Francisco Bay Area.  My father immigrated to the US from Pakistan as a teenager (as a young child, he was a refugee from India to Pakistan).  My mother grew up in Los Angeles in a family of Spanish descent.  Before medicine, I spent over two years working in rural Tanzania.  In medical school in Chicago, I was active with my SNMA chapter.  I have consciously sought to work with groups that have historically been marginalized. Clinically, I have worked with vulnerable populations in Long Beach, Compton, Los Angeles, South Africa, Guatemala, and Haiti.  At UC San Diego (UCSD), I have provided primary care to homeless patients at St. Vincent de Paul Village Health Center, and hospital care to patients at UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest.  In 2017, Dr. Regina Wang and I launched a Diversity Curriculum for the residency and in 2020, I joined the Health Sciences Task Force on Anti-Racism, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, and was asked to Co-Chair the Workgroup on Recruitment, Retention and Representation in the Professional Schools.

dr. regina wang Regina M. Wang, M.D.
Assistant Program Director for Family Medicine Residency
Associate Clinical Professor

I was born and raised in Southern California.  My grandparents were refugees from China in the 1940s.   After recognizing that my Deaf family members faced unique obstacles in accessing healthcare, I pursued a 2-year Deaf Medical Fellowship at UCSD to learn medical American Sign Language (ASL) and ways to better care for the Deaf, Deafblind, and Hard of Hearing (DDBHH) population.   I am a Clinical Consultant for the Center for Deaf Health Equity at Gallaudet University for the deaf and hard of hearing.  I have published articles and presented at national conferences on healthcare disparities experienced by the DDBHH, Latinx, and Asian American populations.  Prior to UCSD, I cared for marginalized populations at a federally qualified health center with clinics in Long Beach and Compton, California, and a district hospital in Durban, South Africa.  While working at UCSD in Hillcrest and St. Vincent de Paul’s homeless clinic, I have had the privilege of being able to communicate directly and advocate for patients who speak Mandarin, ASL, and Spanish.

 

Resident Leads

1000_F_297553957_Fzd08NzkmbcbrH86K0n5fbBRRIVNKx3P.jpgRahil Hudda, D.O., M.P.H.                                                                                                                                             

Resident Lead for Graduate Medical Education Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Committee

I was born in the Bay Area, California to two Pakistani immigrants. Throughout my educational journey I have partaken in multiple South Asian cultural organizations to further explore my identity as a Pakistani Muslim American. After college I spent a year working at a non-profit HIV agency in Los Angeles along with conducting research on sexual/gender minority groups. My interests in medicine are providing care to all sexual/gender minority groups, including HIV treatment/prevent and gender-affirming care, along with general primary care, procedural medicine, and sports medicine. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edgar Geronimo Yap Junior, MD, MA

Edgar (he/him) is a second-generation Filipino-American excited to join the DARC leadership this year. He brings his diverse experiences growing up around California and living in Kuwait to his work and passions. At UC Berkeley, he worked with youth from historically marginalized backgrounds to empower and retain them in higher education. He entered medical school knowing he wanted to do primaryEdgar-Yap-Headshot-1.JPG care and fell in love with Family Medicine. During this time, he was the president of the Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association, Midwest Co-Chair of the Council of Young Filipinx Americans in Medicine, and a member of the First-Generation Low-Income Committee. His passions include immigrant health, advocacy for the Filipino-American community, medical education, community collaborations, and anything and everything we do in Family Medicine. He is excited and humbled to be part of the DARC team this year, hoping to foster community, growth, advocacy, and empathy in the UCSD Family Medicine Residency Program.

Diversity Curriculum

Lectures & Presentation Topics

  • Race in Medicine
  • Implicit Bias
  • Microaggression
  • Health Disparities in Women
  • Contraception Bias
  • Border Health
  • Immigrant, Refugee, Asylee Health
  • Asian American Healthcare Disparities
  • LGBTQ Health
  • Caring for Deaf Patients
  • Advocacy
  • Spirituality

Workshops & Activities

  • Annual Cross-Cultural Workshops with local residencies
  • Journal Clubs regarding Healthcare Disparities
  • Ava DuVernay's 13th Documentary Discussion
  • Race, are We So Different? Exhibit tour & discussion at Museum of Man
  • Privilege Walk
  • Annual Human Trafficking Awareness Week

Scholarly Work

Presentations

  • “Race in Medicine, Implicit Bias, and Microaggressions.” San Diego Academy of Family Physicians’ All Member Meeting: ‘Anti-Racism- Promoting Equity and Inclusion’ (February 2021) - Akbar Rahman MD MPH, Regina Wang MD
  • “Human Trafficking Education for Healthcare Workers.” The Chadwick Center’s Annual San Diego International Conference of Child and Family Maltreatment (January 2021) - Regina Wang MD, Mary Gamboa
  • American Heart Association Mandarin-speaking physician panel on Covid-19 streamed live on zoom across the Western Region states (April 2020) and then broadcasted on television (May 2020) - Regina Wang MD
  •  “Launching a Global Health Rotation in Jordan: Challenges & Lessons Learned.” American Academy of Family Medicine Global Health Summit (October 2019) – Akbar Rahman MD, MPH
  • “Practicing Global Health in Your Own Backyard” American Academy of Family Physicians Global Health Summit (October 2019) - Regina Wang MD, Leopoldine Matialeu MD
  • UC San Diego Health’s N=1 Podcast on Human Trafficking (January 2018) - Regina Wang MD, Sarah Williamson RN, Karen Mitchell-Keels RN
  • “Healthcare Disparities in Primary Care Among Asian Americans” Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association National Conference (September 2014) - Regina Wang, MD
  • “A Generation Lost – Women with HIV in South Africa” AAFP Global Health Workshop (September 2014) - Regina Wang MD, Akbar Rahman MD, MPH
  • “The African Family Physician” AAFP Global Health Workshop (September 2014) - Akbar Rahman MD, MPH, Regina Wang MD
  • “Developing Strategies to Reach the Deaf Community with Health Information: The Cervical Cancer Education Program.” American Association for Cancer Education’s Annual Meeting (October 2006) - Regina Wang, MD

Posters

  • “Assessing Resident Perception of Diversity Climate in a Family Medicine Residency Program.”  American Academy of Family Physicians Program Director Workshop (April 2021) - Leopoldine Matialeu MD, Akbar Rahman MD MPH, Erica Chan, Regina Wang MD
  • “Assessing Physicians’ Perception of Patients and Treatment of Opioid Use Disorder.”  California Society of Addiction Medicine annual conference (September 2020) - Regina Wang MD, Mariel Janowsky MD MPH, Leopoldine Matialeu MD 
  • “Physician and Medical Student Knowledge of Human Trafficking in San Diego” International Summit of Violence, Abuse, and Trauma Across the Lifespan (September 2020) - Mary Gamboa BS, Regina Wang MD
  • “Primary Care Physicians Can Treat Addiction Too: Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) Training in an Addiction Medicine Curriculum” PDW and RPS Residency Education Symposium (April 2020) - Regina Wang MD, Mariel Janowsky MD, MPH, Kanwardeep Kaleka MD, PhD, Akbar Rahman MD, MPH
  • “Addiction Medicine for UC San Diego Family Medicine Present and Future” California Society of Addiction Medicine conference (September 2019) - Kanwardeep Kaleka MD PhD, Mariel Janowsky MD MPH, Akbar Rahman MD MPH, Regina Wang MD
  • “Improving Patient Care: The Implementation of a Diversity Curriculum” PDW and RPS Residency Education Symposium (April 2019) - Regina Wang MD, Maikha Jean-Baptiste MD, Jean-Pierre Valette MD, Akbar Rahman MD, MPH
  • “Integrative Approach to a Community Health Fair.” UC San Diego Public Health Day (April 2019) - Jennifer Chronis MD, Deepa Sannidhi MD
  • “Jordan: Introducing Residents to Global Mental Health.”  American Academy of Family Medicine Global Health Summit (September 2018) - Akbar Rahman MD, MPH
  • “Ecuador: A Global Health Perspective on Integrative Medicine” American Academy of Family Physicians Global Health Summit (September 2018) - Regina Wang MD.

Community Work & Outreach

  • UC San Diego Student-Run Free Clinic
    "In partnership with the community, provides respectful, empowering, high quality health care for the underserved while inspiring the next generation of health professionals."

  • St. Vincent de Paul Village Health Center
    "Through specifically targeted and innovative services and programs, our vision is to break the cycle of homelessness by addressing underlying causes: poverty, the difficulty of finding work that pays a livable wage, access to medical care, mental illness, drug addiction, and domestic violence. We help homeless persons help themselves to become self-sufficient, productive members of society through an extensive and innovative continuum of care."

  • Linda Vista Health Fair
    Health Fair for uninsured and under-insured patients offering free diabetes screening while serving as a pipeline program for under-represented minorities in healthcare. (July 2018 to March 2020)

  • Flying Samaritans
    A non-profit organization with a mission to work alongside existing institutions in Mexico in order to provide impoverished people with medical care, education, and awareness. UCSD undergraduate students recruit the help of residents, physicians, pharmacists, dentists, health educators (such as CPR instructors), and sometimes even alternative care specialists. It is important for them to familiarize themselves with Mexican tradition and culture to provide culturally sensitive care.

  • International Health Collective
    A non-profit student-run organization that aims to solve health disparities in Eastern Tijuana and San Diego communities. International Health Collective, or IHC, takes on this issue through a comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach. They hold a firm belief that it takes a wide lens and a diverse skill set to examine and alleviate root causes to health issues, IHC members originate from different backgrounds and fields of expertise. Specifically, IHC consists of UCSD undergraduate students (medical, engineering, humanities etc.), medical and pharmacy graduate students, health professionals, and community members. Members work towards disentangling the complex relationship between structural barriers and health disparity on a global scale. 

Resources

Report an Incident

There are two UCSD mechanisms if you would like to report an event:

  1. Visit Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination (OPHD) and make a report here.
  2. Confidentially speak with an Ombudsman (858-534-0777). The Office of the Ombuds does not have an obligation to report an incident, but can make suggestions on ways to facilitate change.